Daniel Ranalli
Born 1946, New Haven, CT, lives and works in Cambridge and Wellfleet, MA
Dancing Lines (detail), 1982, photogram, unique; toned gelatin silver print, Museum Purchase, 2005.101
Photograms are images produced by placing an object directly on photosensitive paper and exposing it to light. First introduced to the camera-less process in 1974, Daniel Ranalli compares it to “drawing with invisible ink.” He was drawn to photograms’ “…enormous potential for abstraction, as well as their rich tonal scale. What I really hoped to do in the work was to make photographs that were not always referencing something outside themselves.” Ranalli was also attracted to the element of chance that is inherent in the process. For the next ten years he constructed photograms by exposing strips of matboard and sometimes foil or plastic to two sources of light. The forms of Dancing Lines appear to be composed of pure light, solidified into graceful lines on a simple plane, allowing Ranalli’s invisible ink to come alive.
